2005 was a year of change for our friends at SOE, they embraced real money trade (RMT) in Everquest II with the Station Exchange, overhauled Star Wars Galaxies with the New Gaming Experience, and John Smedley announced the intent to create further changes in his keynote speech at the Austin Game Conference (AGC). In 2006 we have already seen SOE accounce that EQ2 will see a host of changes, and PlanetSidde will be offering a free client for play. The winds of change are blowing at gale force in the offices of SOE and I wanted to find out a bit about why, and what the future holds. Chris Kramer, Director of Corporate Communications for SOE was kind enough to take some time out of his busy schedule and answer my questions about the changes that have happened, and the ones hinted at. How will the games we know and love be affected by the winds of change? Let's discover:
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Grimwell:
In his keynote speech at the AGC John Smedley told us that there would be major changes to SOE's approach in the market. What was the key factor in making this global change across all brands that SOE publishes?
Chris Kramer:
The key factor for our company is continued growth. Over the years, Sony Online Entertainment has gone from 100+ people in San Diego creating history with the original EverQuest to nearly 700 people in San Diego, Austin, TX, Seattle, WA and Taiwan working on online PC games such as EQ, EverQuest II, Star Wars Galaxies, The Matrix Online and PlanetSide, as well as PS2 (Champions: Return to Arms, EverQuest Online Adventures) and PSP titles (Untold Legends: The Warrior’s Code and Field Commander). For our company to continue to grow and be successful, we are breaking out of our North American-centric development focus and embracing genres and design ideas that appeal to players on a global perspective.
Grimwell:
With the Asian MMOG market outdistancing the Western market in terms of penetration and ready adoption of non-traditional concepts for subscriptions and gameplay will we see an eventual abandonment of the traditional box + subscription MMOG format by SOE?
Chris Kramer:
Not any time in the near future. In North America and Europe, retail is crucial for acquiring new customers. That being said, we have seen digital sales and distribution become more and more popular over the last few years, with a large percentage of our subscribers choosing to purchase and receive expansions and content additions like our Adventure Packs digitally. But you can’t beat the thrill of walking into a store like EB or Best Buy, picking up a new box and taking it home.
Grimwell:
How much of the new vision for games at SOE is influenced specifically by the lessons learned in Asia?
Chris Kramer:
We are working on a new title that is tentatively scheduled for this coming fiscal year that embraces an emerging online business model that is just now beginning to become more prevalent in Asia. This title will be digitally distributed only – there are no plans at present for a retail SKU – and will be free to play.
Grimwell:
Can you tell us more about this coming game and how it will demonstrate the new vision for MMOG's?
Chris Kramer:
Unfortunately, I don’t have anything more to add to what John Smedley revealed back in October and in a few subsequent interviews. It’s going to be an entirely new project, not based on any of our current IPs, geared towards more casual players of online games and will be exceedingly easy to not only play, but to enter.
Grimwell:
How much did the success of other companies in the MMOG industry affect this push toward change at SOE?
Chris Kramer:
From our perspective, every successful MMO is a win for not only the genre of online gaming, but for SOE as a company. New MMOs have been attracting a new audience to a genre that SOE clearly dominates in a way that no other North American company does. Eventually, players of these other online games will be looking for new titles and new entertainment, and SOE can offer them a broad range of experiences, from the hardcore guild raiding of EverQuest to the persistent first-person action of PlanetSide to mastering the Force in Star Wars Galaxies.
Grimwell:
The NGE for SWG was our first major impression of how far reaching these changes could be. The reception was quite a bit of controversy within the SWG and MMOG community. What lessons did SOE learn from the delivery and reception of such a massive change to an existing game client?
Chris Kramer:
The main thing that we learned was that we need to begin talking to our communities much earlier whenever there are huge updates coming to a game. We also learned that people really love the concept of creature handling, even if they don’t partake of it
Grimwell:
In the time since we have learned that Planetside will soon offer a free client and that
EQ2 is going to see massive changes as well (changes to crafting, changes to classes, changes to the newbie experience, etc.), so it is clear that existing brands are not protected from the winds of change; are we going to see other games such as the original EverQuest adapted to make it more current and in alignment with the greater vision for SOE games?
Chris Kramer:
EQ is actually the trendsetter in this regard. In March, EQ will be seven years old. That’s pretty phenomenal – and you’d be amazed how many people are still playing the game who joined our world back in 1999. Over the years, EQ has constantly grown and evolved. The graphics engine for the game has been completely overhauled not once but twice in the game’s lifespan in order to keep it competitive in the marketplace. The game itself has massively changed over the years as well, with the introduction of new races, classes, cities, continents, moons and entire planes of reality. Our EQ live team is constantly refining and redefining what the game is to keep our players entertained, challenged and interested.
Grimwell:
Considering that a segment of the fanbase for each of these games has reacted negatively to these changes, is SOE willing – in the short term – to lose a few customers in exchange for a wider appeal in the future? How does this loss/potential gain impact the decisions behind these changes? What level of importance is given to the existing customers in relation to the potential customers?
Chris Kramer:
There has never been such a dramatic update to a live online game as we made with Star Wars Galaxies. This was not a decision that Sony Online Entertainment and LucasArts made without a good deal of thought. Ultimately, we decided that it was in the best interest of both the community and the game to make this switch. Both SOE and LEC feel that the New Game Experience will ultimately result in a larger population of players in Star Wars Galaxies. However, you can see that our developers are trying their hardest to make sure that there is still a place for the player base that was already part of the game.
One of the biggest challenges in running a live game is walking the line between making sure your long-term customers are happy while continuing to keep the game appealing to new players. If we focused solely on the desires of the level 50+ players, new players would feel completely useless and starting zones would become deserted. Eventually, new players would stop coming in to the game, and it would slowly sputter out. Obviously, we don’t want this to happen. By the same token, we need to keep offering new content and new adventures for mid and high level players in order to retain our core subscribers. I feel that SOE has done a great job of walking this line over the years, as is evident by the several hundred thousand people we have playing EQ seven years after launch.
Grimwell:
What was the determining factor behind the introduction of PvP to EQ2, do you have any projections on how this will be received by current subscribers?
Chris Kramer:
Let me take a moment to clear something up: from the very first, we’ve always said that there would not be PvP in EQII at launch, but that it would be a feature that we would be introducing later. We know how popular PvP is with online gamers, but EQII was designed with a focus on social gaming that encouraged grouping and assistive interaction. We’ve always said that PvP was coming, but we wanted to do it in a way that was both meaningful and fun without breaking the core systems of the game. In late February, we will finally be delivering on that promise with the launch of PvP servers for EQII.
Our EQII community has been given a taste for PvP action with the addition of the arena combat that came in with the Desert of Flames expansion. We think that the players are going to really enjoy the ability to finally act upon the good-versus-evil storyline that flows throughout the game and begin true faction combat.
Grimwell:
What of the Matrix Online? This title launched with a well known and liked brand and did not take on a strong presence in the market (prior to coming into the SOE family). Are there any changes planned for this game to broaden its appeal?
Chris Kramer:
The Matrix already has a pretty strong appeal thanks to the license. From our perspective, we’re going to be refining and adding to the core elements of gameplay that are already there while continuing the live events that follow the story created by Paul Chadwick and the Wachowski brothers.
Grimwell:
The Station Exchange could be interpreted as the first actual hint of the changes now happening at SOE. Has this new service been a success? How does it compare against expectations? How much does the average player on an Exchange enabled server spend in a month in comparison to a regular EQ2 player? When will this service move beyond the EverQuest 2 brand and into other games?
Chris Kramer:
We pulled some data in late October (sorry, I really need to update it) that shows the average participant in Station Exchange is spending about $30 per month. The service itself has been a great success, both in terms of usability as well as interoperability with the game. We’re looking at ways to extend the service and make it available in our other games, but setting up Station Exchange for a game takes a great deal of work.
Grimwell:
We have seen SOE adopt the secure exchange of items for real money within games, a radical overhaul of SWG, a coming (and significant) change to EQ2, and an announced change in the subscription model for PS – what else can we expect to see in the next six months for existing franchises in SOE's portfolio?
Chris Kramer:
That would be telling
You’re going to see the introduction of PvP into EverQuest II along with a new character progression path that will help new players feel more unique, a redesign/facelift for Freeport in the original EverQuest, expansions for both games in late February, some cool new content additions in Star Wars Galaxies (heavy weapons!), new deployable items and weapon variants for PlanetSide, continued live events unfolding in Matrix Online… And you’ll be hearing more from us in the spring about many new things as we draw closer to E3.
Grimwell:
The box sale + subscription model brought MMOG's through their first seven years of existence, yet in the last year we have seen a full-fledged MMOG released in the Western market with no subscription fee (Guild Wars) and SOE has clearly changed directions on a number of fronts, what do you feel will be the key to winning in the next generation of MMOG's that come to the market and bring us to 2010 and beyond?
Chris Kramer:
In my personal view, Guild Wars -- while a solid, fun game -- is not really an MMO. And it would seem from the messaging for the game that NC Soft agrees.
But to answer your question, we feel that this new generation of consoles is going to represent a serious opportunity for persistent online games. We’re already incorporating plans for next-gen consoles in designs for some of our future products, including the game being built on the DC Comics license.
Creating games that have a global appeal and are user-friendly are also high on the list of priorities for the future. You will see SOE branching out in the next few years, continuing to embrace our hardcore fantasy MMO players while expanding into new formats and genres of games. It’s going to be a wild ride over the next few years, and we look forward to providing gamers of all types with amazing online experiences.
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I would like to extend my personal thanks to Chris for being generous with his time and answering these questions. From the answers it is clear that the winds of change are indeed strong at SOE; 2006 should be an interesting year to watch with potential change coming to any of their games in addition to a completely new MMOG that will embrace a new model to the Western market. While there may be some uncertainty about the future of our favorite games, it's clear that there is a master plan behind these changes, I'll let my friends in the message boards decide if this plan is the right one or not.
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